The Blueprint: Proven Everywhere. Ready for Healthcare.

Human-Centered Design Thinking with AI Acceleration

IBM. Apple. SAP. Google. Microsoft. Samsung. Intuit. Airbnb. Uber Eats. Bank of America. Capital One. PepsiCo. Virgin America. Virgin Atlantic. Oral-B. P&G. Mayo Clinic. Kaiser Permanente. Cleveland Clinic. GE Healthcare. Philips. Johnson & Johnson. Pfizer.

These are all major brands who’ve employed design thinking in developing their products, services, streamlining processes, or in an effort to enhance innovation.

Only PepsiCo, Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation, Kaiser, and arguably Apple seem to show public-facing evidence for using design-thinking practices in developing communications.

Why is that? Those who weren’t working in consultation with IDEO were likely working traditional agencies and digital shops. And in those cases, despite the years of success in product, service, and process development, design thinking rarely makes its way past the UX/digital team.

It’s been argued that efficient processes may not benefit an agency’s billable hours. But in the face of agencies spouting patient-centered talk and brands demanding patient-centered efforts, it’s remarkable that human-centered design thinking hasn’t infiltrated healthcare communications more widely. 

The thing every modern healthcare brand I speak with needs most is strategic velocity that serves faster, better decision making.

Design thinking has been providing that for decades now, in nearly every industry that touches human behavior. IBM ran it as a company-wide discipline starting in 2012, embedding thousands of designers into product teams across its mainframe, security, and AI businesses—Harvard Business School wrote it up as a 2021 case study. Bank of America built its Keep the Change savings product on human-centered research. Airbnb's founders famously credit design thinking with saving the company. They flew to their hosts' apartments, realized bad photography of listings was killing trust, and fixed the human problem before touching the platform. GE Healthcare used it to redesign medical equipment around how people actually behave in an exam room, not how an engineer thinks they might. Intuit launched Design for Delight in 2007, grew it into a 200-person Innovation Catalysts network by 2013, and saw one application drive a $10M sales boost in one year. Capital One took the acquisition route, bought UX consultancy Adaptive Path in 2014, and integrated the entire team into banking products and experience design.

A well proven methodology. One that influences all startups and UX/UI/CX even when they don’t realize it. Yet, in agencyland and real-world communications its application is limited to highly-constrained digital teams and a few consultants.

It’s fair to say that design thinking has earned its skeptics. The five-step workshop version, the proliferation of Post-it note walls, and critiques stating everything should be "delightful." The most visible parts earned the mockery. And delight was always a consumer goal—great for a retail app. Nobody's designing a delightful infusion experience. Just a better one.

IDEO's 2023 layoffs weren’t about the methodology failing. Quite the inverse. It was the market saying standalone design-thinking consultancy models had been absorbed. Everyone in-housed the methodology. So why pay IDEO for it?

What survived the backlash is what was always real: rigorous human research before a single thing is done. It's why those British planners became indispensable to agencies decades ago—and created the strategy discipline we rely on now. Design thinking just helps assure the strategic Why is focused on the human need and not the brand’s desires.

So here's part 1 of the blueprint for the future: human-centered design thinking, already proven everywhere, applied to communications and not just product and service design. In healthcare, that means the focus always needs to be on the human element—the patient—and what they actually need.

AI Acceleration

No doubt, AI is fast. But speed without direction is just chaos.

I've made the case that traditional agency headcount is an operational bottleneck. That the AOR model bills you for administrative layers, not strategy. That the trap is systemic, not personal.

The natural next move for a healthcare brand that hears that argument is to swing hard the other way. Cut the headcount, buy the AI tools, automate the creative pipeline, and call it transformation.

That's not transformation. That's just high-speed mediocrity.

Pure AI acceleration without a human foundation doesn't produce better work faster. It produces generic work faster. True transformation isn't software replacing humans. It's software amplifying a deeply intentional, human-centered strategic process that was already there.

Virtue-alignment with design thinking practices can provide AI with the right direction. Humans-in-the-loop of each step creates ongoing corrective direction, to arrive faster in the right place.

This is the part AI cannot do alone, and won't be able to do anytime soon. Your favorite strategists and creatives are using AI right now. So AI doesn't replace the 10% of an invoice that was senior strategy or creative thinking. It replaces the 90% of an invoice that had nothing to do with either. 

It’s actually dangerous for a healthcare brand to think they can fully replace the agency or human element with AI. If you input generic assumptions into an AI, you get generic copy out. The old adage of garbage in, garbage out was true long before AI. It's still true now. AI is capable of making garbage faster. Or accelerating exquisite work.

The strategy simply has to be hand-carved with human insights before the machine ever touches it.

What I haven't found—and I've looked hard—is anyone applying design thinking to the operating model of healthcare commercialization itself, fused with AI acceleration. If a legacy AOR has actually rebuilt its operating model around this—not bolted AI onto the old one, not hired a Chief AI Officer for the press release—I'd genuinely love to see the work. What I keep finding instead is AI as a shiny ornament on legacy structure.

Bolting AI onto what you already do isn’t transformation. Redesigning an entire process to integrate the technology with the human element is what changes everything. Strapping a rocket onto a horse’s saddle doesn’t produce a fast car. It produces a horse with a rocket on it.

That's part 2 of the blueprint for the future: AI acceleration, already proven everywhere, integrated into the business operating model instead of wallpapering the old one. In healthcare, that means legacy AOR agencies need to use AI as more than a decoration or media talking point.

Modern Pods vs Legacy AORs

What has happened, in healthcare specifically, is the use of senior-expert pod structures working in Agile and design sprints (by the likes of Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson) to facilitate innovation and change management.

I’ve worked on a Merck Agile change-management campaign as Creative Director. I've sat inside one of these pods as a copy lead working directly with brand stakeholders on digital innovation. The model works. It’s cross-functional, senior-adjacent, positioned as regulatory friendly, and fast. Pfizer built the same muscle at scale with its Dare to Try champions network and has also demanded Agile, pod teams. Johnson & Johnson formalized it into what researchers call a 3T model—team, time, tools—inside its regulated R&D process.

All three prove pharma can move fast when it restructures effort around people and projects instead of hierarchy.

None of them prove the other half. Meaning, an Agile pod can ship a campaign in half the time and still ship the wrong campaign. Fast alignment isn't the same as deep excavation. That's the piece design thinking adds. That's the piece none of these models were built to supply.

Design thinking finds the human truth. AI clears the path. How it gets organized is a different conversation.

The Velocity Shift

Design thinking is proven everywhere. AI is proven everywhere. Nobody I’ve found has fused them to serve branded healthcare communications. That's the blueprint for greater strategic velocity in any industry.

IDEO and Pentagram have used design thinking masterfully to make a single product or build a brand platform—the Ascensia glucose meter redesigned to look like a consumer device instead of a medical one, the CONRAD HIV-prevention gel reframed around beauty instead of fear. Pentagram did the same for Evernow, rebranding menopause care to break the stigma around it instead of medicalizing it further. Nobody's used it to make the entire pipeline from strategy to deployment faster, leaner, and senior-led. That's the gap. That's the blueprint.

It's how a senior team runs at a velocity that used to require an entire agency floor. And we’ve built our entire consulting model and AI methodology around it.

Because, unfortunately and all too often, healthcare has lagged behind in process and digital advancements.

The brands that move first on this will set the pace for everyone else. We're not going to chase you. No pitch, no deck, no follow-up sequence.

Just say hi or let’s schedule a Skirmish Session™, whenever you're ready to move faster.